Apple extends iCloud storage upgrades

If you had a MobileMe account for online storage, Apple has good news for you: The complimentary extension of storage services that was supposed to end on September 30, 2012 has been extended by one year, according to an Apple KnowledgeBase document.

The predecessor to Apple's current iCloud online service, MobileMe offered 20GB of storage as part of its $99-per-year fee. To help ease the transition from MobileMe to iCloud (which offers 5GB of free storage), MobileMe users were given 20GB of iCloud storage for free until September 30, 2012. After that, users were going to have to pay $40 a year for their 20GB. MobileMe users who had upgraded their storage to 40GB or 60GB received 50GB of free iCloud storage; they were going to have to pay $100 a year for that 50GB.

If you currently have a free storage upgrade and decide that you need even more storage, Apple warns that you will be charged for it. Also, Apple says that you can't revert back to your complimentary storage plan if you then decide to cancel an upgrade (for example, you upgrade from 20GB to 50GB, and then decide later you want to revert back to 20GB).

According to the KnowledgeBase document, Apple decided to extend the deadline as a "thank you to our former MobileMe members who moved to iCloud." Less charitably inclined observers might think that this extension is an explanation--or a fix--for an apparent glitch discovered last Monday, whereby iCloud users discovered that they could have 25GB of extra storage for free until the year 2050.